Springtime Swingtime!

Kim Sharp, a math teacher at Kearsarge Regional Middle School,
in New London, New Hampshire, assigned his
pre-algebra math class a spring project on hinged dissections.
He sent me a message on June 21, 2003 describing the results:

"Hi, Greg! Well, it happened. My class of 15 seventh graders and 5 sixth
graders showed off their hinged creations to each other a week ago Friday
AM, and then they decorated the room, transforming it into a mini-museum of
dissections. We had a sign reading "Springtime Swingtime", a large
dissection pattern on the ceiling, a demo "stained glass" dissection on one
of the windows, a welcoming table with Dudeney's triangle-square in wood
and Loyd's red heart and black spade and a backlit screen illuminated with
the Cross-Crescent illustration reproduced from your first book!

"All this was set-up for a sixth grade class to come to play later! My
students set out their projects on the lab benches and then left me to host
the incoming class and its teacher. I had our computer aide photographing
so that I could answer questions and schmooze. The visitors had a great
time trying out stuff like - how 4 Greek crosses can hinge to make one
large one, checking out a 2 square dissection with a human figure spanning
the pieces, checking a T-slide, puzzling the stained glass, etc. I have
attached various shots to give you the idea. There was a whole lot of
excitement and curiosity in the air!

"Prior to all of this I spent three class periods going over tessellations
which yield hinged dissections to problems with two different sized
squares, using T-strips to find overlapping figures, making two equilateral
triangles into one larger to show a different slant on the Pythag. theorem,
and hinging some oaktag to demonstrate the possibilities of cyclic hinging.

"This little recreation provided some neat insights into tessellations,
constructing irrational lengths - blah, blah. Anyway, thanks for providing
support. I know I have one very thrilled seventh grade girl who clearly
deserved the T-shirt award for creativity! She stood up on a chair to
model the T-shirt, and the whole class yelled and cheered.